The Intel SSD 660p SSD Review: QLC NAND Arrives For Consumer SSDs
by Billy Tallis on August 7, 2018 11:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The Intel SSD 660p manages an average data rate on The Destroyer that is only slightly slower than the Crucial MX500 mainstream SATA SSD and the Kingston A1000 entry-level NVMe SSD. It's a step up from the performance of the 512GB Intel SSD 600p, and more than three times faster than the DRAMless Toshiba RC100.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores for the Intel SSD 660p are quite poor by NVMe standards and significantly worse than the Crucial MX500, but the latency isn't completely out of control like it is for the Toshiba RC100.
The average read latency from the 660p during The Destroyer is comparable to other low-end NVMe SSDs and better than the 600p or Crucial MX500. The average write latency is more than twice that of the MX500 but lower than the 600p and RC100.
The 99th percentile read latency from the Intel SSD 660p on The Destroyer is significantly worse than any other NVMe SSD or the Crucial MX500 SATA SSD, but the 99th percentile write latency is an improvement over the 600p and does not show the extreme outliers that the Toshiba RC100 suffers from.
The energy usage of the 660p during The Destroyer is a bit better than average for NVMe SSDs, though still quite a bit higher than is typical for SATA SSDs. The 660p is less power hungry than most NVMe drives and slower, but not enough to drag out the test for so long that the power advantage disappears.
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dromoxen - Friday, August 10, 2018 - link
You would hope these things would have even larger dram buffers than tlc. I will pass on these 1st gen and stick with with HD.Has intel stopped making ssd controllers?
To do some tests , write endurance, why not cool down the m.2 nand to LN2 temps, I'm sure debauer has some pots and equipment. I expect these will be even cheaper by jan 19
tomatotree - Tuesday, August 14, 2018 - link
Intel makes their own controllers for all their enterprise drives, and all 3DXP drives, but for consumer NAND drives they use 3rd party controllers with customized firmware.As for LN2 cooling, what would that show? That the drive might fail if you use it in a temperature range way out of spec?
351Cleveland - Monday, August 20, 2018 - link
I’m confused. Why would I buy this over, say, an MX500 (my default go-to)? This thing is a dog in every way. How can Anandtech recommend something they admit is flawed?icebox - Thursday, December 6, 2018 - link
I don't understand why everybody fusses about retention and endurance so much. Do you really buy ssd's to leave them on a shelf for months or years? Retention ? If it dies during warranty you exchange it. If it dies after it then it's probably slow and small in comparison with what's available than.You do have backups, right? Because no review or test or battery of tests won't guarantee that *your drive* won't die.
BTW that's the only way I saw ssd's die - it works perfectly and after a reboot it's gone, not detected by the system.
icebox - Thursday, December 6, 2018 - link
The day has come when choosing storage is 4 tiered.You have fast nvme, slow nvme, sata ssd's and traditional hdd's. At least I kicked hdd's off my desktop. I have a samsung nvme for boot and applications and sata ssd's for media and photos. Now I'm looking of replacing those with the 2tb 660p and moving those to the nas for bulk storage.
southleft - Tuesday, May 14, 2019 - link
It would be very helpful if the review would show just how full the drive can be before performance degrades significantly. Clearly, when the drive is "full" its performance sucks, but can we expect good performance when the drive is half-full, two-thirds full, three-quarters full? C'mo, Anandtech, tell us something USEFUL here!boozed - Monday, December 30, 2019 - link
There's something wrong with the 970 EVO's results on page 3. Full performance exceeds empty performance. This is not reflected in the 970 EVO review.